


Shell Shock

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Broody, Consequences, Eternity, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, friends to lovers?, moody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-29 21:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20089363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: Shell shock is perhaps the first term we have that attempts to describe what we now call PTSD: the deep damage caused by trauma.At the risk of pointing out the obvious and sounding far too cynical--damned few of us get out of this life without suffering PTSD. I do not say that lightly. Emotional abuse, rape, war, accident, illness, social conflict, and any number of other catastrophes can cause sufficient exposure to sufficient trauma to leave us scarred with PTSD. There are so very many walking wounded.Sometimes it takes veterans to comfort and console veterans. I suppose this is hurt/comfort, of a sort. But it's mainly love and theology.  Mainly love and silence and tears.I love these two--angel and demon alike, both struggling with how damned HARD God's ineffability can seem.





	Shell Shock

Aziraphale rocked the “wily serpent” in his arms, silent support for silent tears. He had rocked him an hour, and was prepared to rock him for hours more.

Six thousand years plus of suppressed PTSD, he thought, a bit muzzily. What had dear Will written in Hamlet? “The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” That was it…and the more fool Crowley for so preferring the funny ones as to miss the relevance of Hamlet to himself.

Or did he prefer the funny ones for fear of that relevance?

He could almost hear the demon’s sarky voice. “Whot-whot?! Who wants to spend a shilling for standing room in the yard, and more for the oysters and oranges, and sneak your own flask in, and put up with the jaw-me-dead, just to be reminded of how miserable you are—and that the choice is between staying miserable or offing yourself? Angel-angel-angel, your idea of a good evening out leaves a lot to be desired.”

If he were a little more of a bastard—a little more selfish, a little less in love with his wily serpent—he could probably counter that Crowley’s idea of a nice evening in was equally debatable. But he knew this wasn’t what Crowley had intended: lying in Aziraphale’s arms, shaking, weeping silent tears, wracked by over six thousand years of memories and losses.

What had God meant, when she exiled the Fallen? What could she have had in mind, turning the rebels and the questioning souls, and the innocents who had no experience of choosing between good and evil into the tormented, lost creatures they had become?

He had watched the Fall. Taken part in the Fall. Been one of Her Divinity’s loyal warriors. He’d seen the thousands plummet.

He’d heard the screams.

He’d wanted to ask her why—but like all those left in Heaven, he’d seen the price of questions.

He’d assured himself: God is love. God is good. God has a plan. It will all work out.

He’d assured himself of the same in Eden. But by the time they got to Eden, he’d had a chance to think. He hadn’t reached too many firm conclusions. But he’d thought enough to know he needed—NEEDED—to give those silly, innocent humans his sword. And he’d regretted enough that when the demon spoke to him, he listened. And replied.

Now he was crying too, he thought, exasperated.

What a pair we make.

He might have given up on God. He’d come close in all the years since creation, watching not only the demons in Hell, but the angels in Heaven behave with so little love or goodness. Watching man put both to shame in the realms of creative cruelty. Waiting and waiting for God to respond—to justify it all, somehow. To resolve it, to provide the moral of the story.

“Free will,” Crowley had sarked, more than once. “What good is that, if it’s all arsenic and Enclosure and witch burning and nuclear weapons and Borgias in charge of the lot? I ask you—what good is it?”

But in asking, he’d answered the same question in Aziraphale’s heart just sufficiently. Just enough.

Without free will, Crowley, in all his sarky, stroppy, cynical, skeptical glory, was impossible. And a world without Crowley had slowly become a world in which Aziraphale did not want to live.

Perhaps Heaven and Hell were not so much moral kingdoms, as necessary space for questions to exist? Perhaps only by exile—by cleaving free space far, far away from herself, could God ensure that Eve could sin and Adam could be tempted and both could be exiled and the entire world set spinning and history opened up and rainbows be offered as a promise and Jesus to die and somehow change the world when even Aziraphale could not rationally cope with the illogic of the Trinity or the issue of how the blatantly mortal lad had been “God’s son” any more than anything created was God’s begetting…

Maybe that first Fall was necessary to create the space for dialog.

In which case, perhaps, the damned were not actually damned.

Perhaps the Fall was the stage upon which not only Lucifer, but Jacob wrestled with God. Where everyone wrestled with God.

Where communication occurred.

Where God’s creation became truly independent of God…a child growing up.

What if that creation someday equaled God herself—in love, in cruelty, in judgement, in power, in wisdom, in folly?

What if God was in the business of creating beings who could become Gods?

What if she really was a mother?

And all her creations her true children?

And Hell no more than the first step any of those children had taken to move away from her?

And her plan, her desperate plan, was for them all to grow up?

But, oh, he thought. The price…

They had been making love.

For the first time, they had been making love. It had been so fragile. So…amazing. His Crowley, shaking under his hands. His Crowley, leaning into his kisses. And he—he falling, falling, falling into golden eyes and a serpent who loved him.

“My angel,” he’d said, stroking those lean cheeks, those high cheekbones, looking into those golden eyes. “My angel.” Because six thousand years and a Fall never had taken the angel out of his demon. To him, Crowley was still one of the firstborn of God—and was forgiven. Forever forgiven.

But the demon had gasped at the words, and bent, and broken, and the tears had been set free…

Six thousand years of PTSD, at a single word.

And now Aziraphale lay in his own bed, holding his own dear demon, his fallen angel, and he stroked the hair back from his brow, and he cradled him, and whispered, “Shhhh. Shhhh. It’s all right. I love you.”

And the stars danced in the heavens. And Earth turned. And God smiled, as two of her first children grew older, and wiser, and closer to her.


End file.
